Ideas for Educators - Idea Blog

1 Essential Step for Effective Co-Teaching

2/26/2015

An old proverb says, “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” As more hands participate in the completion of a task, the roles and responsibilities can become blurred. Whose job is it to be the head cook? Who has to scrub the pots and pans? Who gets to add the spice? Who cleans up the mess?

A similar confusion can occur in a co-taught classroom. Two teachers, often with years of solo experience, must find a way to share or divide responsibilities to achieve the best student outcomes. This process is complicated by a number of factors, such as:

Ego
Philosophy of education
Values
Personal and Professional Goals
Cognitive Style
Sense of Time

Explicit communication about roles and responsibilities is essential to success. Partners who fail to engage in this discussion often report frustration over a lack of parity.

The Co-Teaching Responsibility Checklist offers partners a structure for discussing the many responsibilities that arise throughout the instructional cycle. Decisions reached by using this structured checklist are not lodged in cement, but can be reexamined as the year progresses. Teams can adapt this form to add the unique tasks associated with their co-taught class.

For additional information, read Co-Teaching that Works: Strucutes and Strategies for Maximizing Student Learning, or attend an upcoming seminar sponsored by www.ber.org

Upcoming seminar cities include:
March 16 Rochester, NY
March 17 Newark, NJ
March 18 Long Island, NY
March 19 Burlington, VT
March 20 Detroit, MI

April 20 Atlanta, GA
April 21 Houston, TX
April 22 Dallas, TX
April 23 Tulsa, OK
April 24 Phoenix, AZ

Persuasive Writing with WOW Factor

2/25/2015

“To Sell is Human,” claims Daniel Pink in his book with the same title. Everyone is selling something – an idea, a hope, a rule, etc. What do students sell? My partners and I considered this question and decided that students frequently try to sell a peer on their favorite book. To make this process more authentic and engaging, we had students develop a sales pitch and added augmented reality for Wow factor.

How to:

·      First, students created a Book Talk in written form. We asked for a hook, a brief summary, a counterargument and a close – about 7 – 10 sentences. When read aloud, the average time was 1 minute.

·      Students then rehearsed with a partner, adding expression and gestures.

·      Small groups worked together to videotape each other giving their Book Talk.

·      Students then used the free Aurasma app to turn their video into an overlay or aura. Next, they took a photo of the book cover and used it as a trigger. This means that when anyone scans the book cover with Aurasma, up pops the video sales pitch for the book.

·      Finally, Aurasma stickers were placed on the book spines. Now, when students are looking for a book in the library, they can scan with Aurasma and listen to a persuasive book talk.

Here's a photo of me demonstrating to students what it looks like when you scan and the video sales pitch pops up.

Focusing a Personal Narrative

2/24/2015

Personal narratives are best when they capture a moment in time and help the reader to experience it fully. The challenge for teachers is helping students to narrow their topic so that they don’t write a “bed-to-bed” story.

After students chose a day they wanted to write about, we used a clock face as a planning tool. Students broke the day into 12 one-hour segments. Then students starred one of the hours that was most interesting. Using another clock face, they broke the hour into 4 fifteen-minute segments, and again starred one segment that was most interesting.

Next, we taught a “slow motion writing strategy” to slow down even a short amount of time. For example, we had each student write down, “They threw the ball.” Using the iPad app SloPro, we videotaped students throwing a ball, then viewed it in slow motion. Students were asked to rewrite the original sentence, adding more detail based on what they saw in slow motion. One student wrote “He quickly glanced at the catcher, cocked his arm back, aimed with precision and let the ball fly off his finger tips.”

Finally we had students think of a simple action they might include in their personal narrative, i.e. “I hit the piñata.” Then they practiced envisioning it in slow motion and rewriting it with greater descriptive detail, i.e. “I gripped the bat tightly, threw my hips into it and swung at that stubborn piñata with all my might.”

Using the time continuum (12 hours to 1 hour to 15 minutes to 1 slow motion minute) really made sense to the students and helped them to write a focused but rich personal narrative.

Are you Generationally Savvy in your Co-Teaching?

2/12/2015

Jennifer Abrams, author of The Multigenerational Workplace, explores the issues of a working and collaborating with peers of a different age.

We may have millennials who will have many different careers partnered with Boomers who are single-career oriented. We may have millennials who have a multi-tasking approach to work co-teaching with Boomers who find multi-tasking rude. We may have Xers with blunt communication styles working with Millennials who can be more sensitive. How do we create partnerships that honor a wide range of beliefs and behaviors?

The first step is to become aware of the common profiles associated with people of different generations. Check out this document from Abrams work that includes a table of comparisons.

Make Dice

2/10/2015

Add a bit of novelty to your instruction by using the Make Dice app for iPad. This simple app lets you design the six faces of a die, placing either text or photos on each face, and choosing from 6 background colors. The dice appear on a board and can be rolled by tilting the iPad. You can have several dice on the board simultaneously. $2.99 in the App Store.

Use this in teaching for

selecting students to read their writing
linking application tasks to vocabulary
adding the five senses to writing
discussing one of the themes of geography
choosing a web tool to explore
deciding who gets to go first

For a Twist on Cup Stacking, Try Idea Stacking!

1/25/2015

Plastic party cups can be reused for an engaging activity for students of all ages. Because you can write on the outside of these cups with the Vis a Vis, water-based markers, students can write on them and then wash them clean for the next use.

Over the years I have had students stack everything from word families (elementary school) to common items that contain acid (high school.) Other ideas include:

·      Characteristics of a time period in history
·      Impressionist artists
·      Different types of trees
·      Prime numbers

In the photo above, right, teachers at a workshop I was facilitating created a cup pyramid of examples of specially designed instruction (SDI) for the co-taught classroom. Groups competed against each other to see who could think of the most ideas and build the tallest pyramid.

12+ Vocabulary Strategies

1/19/2015

Thanks to the generosity of the Maine Department of Education, I can make my recent webinar, Differentiated Vocabulary Strategies, available to teachers everywhere! Sprinkled throughout the webinar are research tidbits and more than a dozen strategies for insuring that students increase the breadth and depth of their vocabulary. Click here to listen! (Join in at the 3m20s point)

AR your Jeopardy games this fun?

1/11/2015

The holidays provided me some much needed time to play with Augmented Reality! In addition to exploring several AR apps such as Anatomy 4D (upper grades and secondary) and The Tortoise and the Hare (elementary), I also created some AR experiences using Aurasma. Here’s one of the ideas I developed for classroom instruction.

Many teachers use Jeopardy games to review for a unit test. Why not add some Augmented Reality to the experience? I used a Daily Double image as my trigger image.

Then I created a short video related to the science content and made it my overlay. Now, if a team picks the Daily Double, they can watch the video clip before answering.

4 Card Vocabulary Concentration

1/2/2015

Ready to mix things up a bit for the New Year? Try this 4 Card Concentration strategy for practicing vocabulary.

All you need for this strategy are 4 index cards per word. If you want to make it a bit easier, use a different color for each of the four tasks, as seen in the photo. Have the students create cards for their essential vocabulary terms.

1.     Word (green)
2.     Definition (yellow)
3.     Synonym (orange)
4.     Illustration (pink)

After creating cards for each term, mix them up and place them on the floor (face up – easier, or face down – harder.) Match the cards, two at a time. Any two of the four can be a match, i.e., definition and illustration. Try it yourself with these 7th grade science cards in the photo!

Gift Wrap Writing

12/10/2014

Here's a post from the past that I like to share again each year at this time.

‘Tis the season…to rip paper off of gifts! If that happens in your home, be sure to save as many scraps of paper as you can. Cut them into small pieces (about 4x4). Hand them out to students in the New Year and provide them with a writing prompt meant to elicit a brief response. After students have written their response, direct them to fold the paper up as if it was a gift, and exchange it with a peer.

Such a simple way to add some novelty, emphasize that sharing ideas is similar to gift giving, and reuse wrapping paper!